Former Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi polarized even after his death: Thousands of supporters flocked to his funeral service in Milan Cathedral. Critics consider the decreed state mourning to be “completely out of place”.
The television broadcasts live for hours, the first people come to the square in front of the Milan Cathedral in the morning to say goodbye to Silvio Berlusconi. They stand there in the blazing sun. Some with umbrellas to get some shade. In the end it should be several thousand.
The car with Berlusconi’s coffin doesn’t take the shortest route to the cathedral, but drives through Milan once again – the city that is more closely associated with the media mogul, businessman, politician and former AC Milan owner.
Celebrated by his followers…
“There is only one president, one president,” chanted Berlusconi’s supporters as the coffin reached the church.
The applause also continues in the church. In addition to friends and family, around 2,000 guests from politics, society, the media and sports have come – such as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, with whom Berlusconi led the country in the centre-right alliance until his death. Also among those present is President Sergio Mattarella, and even Hungarian President Victor Orban came.
Berlusconi was Italy’s prime minister for a total of nine years, longer than anyone in post-war Italy. For more than three decades, he shaped the country with his politics. In doing so, he split Italy into ardent supporters and ardent opponents. For his followers, he was the politician to touch – “il cavaliere” – someone who moved Italy forward. For his opponents, he was a right-wing populist who, above all, enriched himself and removed the taboos on the extreme right in Italy.
…reviled by his opponents
A division that the archbishop also understands in his sermon: “When a person is a politician, he always wants to assert himself – with supporters and opponents. There are those who let him be praised and those who can’t stand him.”
His funeral has also caused controversy: it is the first time that a prime minister in Italy has received a state funeral. The Meloni government has ordered national mourning, and the government has largely stopped working for three days. In parliament, meetings and votes have even been canceled for about a week.
The flags on public buildings are at half-mast – this usually happens after serious disasters with many victims. “What an exaggeration, completely misplaced,” says former Minister and EU Commissioner Emma Bonino in an interview. The newspaper “La Stampa” calls the funeral “grief that divides”.
Even in death, Berlusconi remains what he was all his life: a one-man show that polarizes. Or, as the archbishop put it more conciliatory at the funeral:
Silvio Berlusconi was a politician, a businessman, a personality in the limelight.